


Darkspawn, Discord, and More Corpses Than You’d Think

by TheOneKrafter



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Amnesia, Darkspawn, Deep Roads (Dragon Age), Magic, Modern Character in Thedas, Modern Girl in Thedas, Storm Coast (Dragon Age), Survival, The Blight (Dragon Age), Wilderness Survival, magical amnesia, one woman alone on a beach, thats it, thats the book, the first part of the book is just
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29276589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOneKrafter/pseuds/TheOneKrafter
Summary: “The first thing she registers is sand.Wet, grainy sand in her hands, lying face down. There’s rocks too, slick like obsidian with the waves. But wet sand is what she registers first.”The Storm Coast is not fun. Double not fun when you’re a lone woman in the middle of nowhere and can’t remember your own name, let alone memories that should probably matter.Welcome to Thedas, Eris doesn’t really know what’s going on, but she’ll act like she does!
Comments: 24
Kudos: 121





	1. Grains Between your Fingernails

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, here’s another book instead of a update to something else. 
> 
> ...Have fun!

The first thing she registers is sand. 

Wet, grainy sand in her hands, lying face down. There’s rocks too, slick like obsidian with the waves. But wet sand is what she registers first. 

Then, the lapping of the loud waves on her legs and shoes. The crashing push pull she can feel her brain rocking with. Back and forth back and forth, like nights after a day at the beach where you still feel like you’re in the water, lying still in bed. 

Except it’s not in bed. She’s on a real fucking beach. 

She groans, a low sound from her throat that ends in a coughing fit. She hasn’t drank water in a while either, huh? Her lips hurt, probably definitely chapped. 

_ Fuck.  _

Her body aches. 

She opens her eyes, after forcing her heavy head up from where her face’s left side had been getting friendly with the sand— _ fuck sand sand and more sand she hates the stuff it won’t wash out for days at this fucking rate _ —so she can look around and see where she is. 

She feels stretched and tight, dried saltwater. What the fuck is going  _ on? _

Black sand and stone beach, unbearably cold thanks to the winds coming in from the water, though not as much as she would be if she weren’t lying flat on the ground—

Cliffs. 

Suddenly, things sharpen. 

Her hands clench around the black sand and rocks, fiercely, pushing herself up to a sitting position, ignoring the— _ ouch ouch ouch _ —protests of her arms. 

Where is she? What day is it? Where was she before this, and  _ where can she get help? _

Everything is fuzzy. She doesn’t  _ know _ where exactly she was before this, even if she knows where she probably was. Now is that a sign of a concussion or her ADD, well, best she doesn’t take anymore naps anytime soon and doesn’t find out. 

She reaches up to check her head for any blood anyways. Just in case. 

She’s in pajamas. Why is she in the, what,  _ highlands _ , in pajamas? She’s got socks and sneakers on, at least, even if those are soaked and the rubber bottoms of those running shoes will  _ not _ be much help here. 

And she’s  _ really fucking cold _ now that she’s sat up. The wind is literally howling. The sky is a not at all promising grey, washing everything around her out in—

Is that a red plant? 

Her eyes narrow. 

...is that a  _ familiar red plant? _

Red plants aren’t really prone to seawater in this kind of climate, she knows this is definitely not a temperate zone from the—

Is that. 

It’s fucking spindleweed. 

Oh god. 

Oh  _ fuck.  _

Cliffs, black beach, fuck, the  _ rocks _ , the formation of the cliffs why didn’t she notice that first—

She sits, cross legged, idly rubbing sand off her hands onto her soaked flannel pajama pants. 

Either she just woke up in the Storm Coast or some Norse country. 

_...please be a Norse country they have good healthcare for whatever ailment is clearly hitting her right now.  _

She’s clearly concussed. She must be concussed. Okay, can she remember her name? A concussed person wouldn’t be able to remember their name! And she is clearly-

Er. 

What the fuck is her name. 

Oh  **_goddamnit_ ** _.  _

It’ll get back to her. Probably. Right now she needs shelter, nowhere near any of those fucking caves, before nightfall, and to find a modern person to prove she most absolutely is  _ not _ on a fictional unnamed beach on the Storm Coast. 

With gritted teeth she gets to her feet, one leg at a time, and takes in any signs of big ass scary spiders. 

...what would be a tell tale sign of a big ass scary spider, actually?

Suspicious footprints and a big ass scary  _ fucking _ spider, brain. Now focus you useless bag of thinking meat—

Right. Shelter. Food. Water. 

She pats her pockets, the pants were from the men’s isle, and thus blessedly had big pockets, but there’s no feel of her phone on the pockets, though that— yup. That’s her pocket knife.  _ That _ is really fucking useful. 

She pulls out the blade and flips it open, checking for any damage or beginning rust from the soak the two of them clearly got, but the stainless steel seems relatively unharmed. For now. No more swims for the both of them for a  _ while.  _

Alright. Con to having the pocket knife, she  _ only  _ has the pocket knife besides her clothes on her back. And, shit this is her favorite long sleeved shirt, it’s gonna be ruined by the end of this she knows how this kind of thing always ends, torn to ribbons for bandages or whatever. 

...or she gets rescued?

…

Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. She can already feel it. Call it a nihilist’s intuition. 

Oh what a panic inducing thought! Oh she’s stranded on a maybe videogame beach she needs to stop thinking— _ she’s in shock, she’s probably in shock, that’s why everything feels muddy _ —and  _ move.  _ Fuck! Focus!

She smacks the side of her face, thankfully after moving her pocket knife to the other hand, and lets the sting ground her past the drowsiness weighing her whole body down. Did she  _ swim _ to shore or wash up?

She starts walking, one foot in front of the other, looking out for anything hostile, like a  _ baby dragon _ , while she goes. 

...haha what if she gets magic?

Gods above she’s going to fucking die. 

Food. Water. Shelter. Not in that specific order. 

Shelter, food, water. Because if she smells rain in the air past the salt, that is gonna be handled. 

...She’s gonna need a bucket, for that. 

Alright. Abandoned huts? There were a few in Inquisition, but that’s a fucking  _ videogame _ and also in a specific time period. She doesn’t know where on the coast she is, or, holy shit,  _ when.  _

Haha she skipped a couple steps of grief to acceptance on this whole Storm Coast thing!

The handle of her pocket knife cuts into her soft hand. She’s gripping it too hard. 

One step after the other. Crunch crunch crunch goes the rocks like obsidian. 

There’s a path leading up off the shore, up into the cliffs, to the left of her, a hundred feet away. Fuck she hates heights. And steep paths. And bears, are there bears up there? 

...she will strive to be  _ very quiet _ . 

And suddenly develop fire magic or something if need be. 

She’s still not walked all the way to the path yet. No one highlights how slow and  _ loud _ being stranded in a place is when they write about it, yet here she is. The water crashing into the sand sounds like cannon fire in her ears, along with her every too loud step, and she’s shivering more violently than she thought she was, and  _ oh what if she dies? _

Shelter, food, water. 

And no bears. Avoid bears. And spiders. And hope she’s in Norway. This is fine! She’ll be fine! 

Oh fuck she forgot how to start a fire. 

—

She is not in Norway. She is absolutely fucking not in Norway. 

You wanna know why she knows that? Hm? What has brought that to her ever important attention? 

Dead dwarf. 

Well, okay, it could just be your average compact person, alright? She ain’t tall herself, but the corpse has  _ armor and coins on it.  _

And it’s not fresh, either. Fucking  _ yikes.  _

She’s gonna throw up. 

_ No she is  _ **_not_ ** _ going to throw up, that’s  _ **_unbecoming._ **

She breathes through her mouth, and pointedly  _ doesn’t think _ . 

Bare hands fiddle with leather straps, pat for valuables. The metal of the armor is losing its polish, it’s starting to sprinkle out and the droplets slowly slide down the murky surface, her blurred face and hands reflected back. 

The body has still got useful stuff on it, because apparently the only people stupid enough to be this close to the Waking Sea are her and him. So that’s. 

Anyways she’s got a pouch of coppers and silvers, which would be useful if she were anywhere but here. Then again, how likely is someone to serve a person wandering around in sandy pajamas?

So much sand. She’s never gonna scrub it all out, like salt in her bones. Ugh. 

She’s got two little daggers now, too, and an oiled rag she assumes was for cleaning them. And a small backpack. 

...She’s not taking the armor. 

Just. No. 

She stays crouched by the dead meat that used to be a person, and feels her eyes prickle with tears. 

_ Shit.  _

She’s not a praying person, she doesn’t worship any gods and she doesn’t give a shit about most religions. 

From the look of his armor, he wasn’t from Orzammar or anything. 

“Blessed be the righteous ones, the keepers of the peace,” She mumbles, just in case he was Andrastean. She can’t burn the body, she can barely remember how to start a small fire and cooked meat attracts people. Is that even how the start of the prayer for the dead goes? Oh fuck it it’s the thought that counts. 

Ugh. 

“I’m sorry you died, thanks for the stuff, I hope you're guided by Hades to...wherever you’re headed,” She finishes lamely, standing from her achy crouch. 

Now she needs to get very far from this area and whatever caused the slashes marring this guy’s face. And from any predators intent on, well. Y’know. 

Circle of life. 

Oh this is fucked. 

She starts walking through the underbrush again, looking up at the sky to see if she can see the sun through the imposing clouds. 

It’s high up, if that pale white dot is to be believed. 

A few hours to find shelter. 

Well, at least she always knows where north is. 

The waves get particularly violent below, as if in response to her calling them out. 

Yeah. Definitely knows which way is north. 

She slings her new backpack over her shoulder, money and the little daggers inside. Her only possessions.

She misses her laptop already, fuck, it was  _ new! _ She’s never seeing it again! She didn’t even upgrade all her tools in Stardew yet! 

...warped sense of priorities, self, when you’re trudging past a couple bushes on the top of a cliff on a greyscale beach. Another point in the concussed jar. 

Would she be aware enough if she were concussed to question if she’s concussed, though? 

Most people can remember their name, though, so obviously she’s just a special case.

If she can’t find a hut to duck into, she’s gonna need to make a lean-to on the edge of one of these rock walls. It’ll be hard to hack a few tree limbs into the way she needs them with one of the daggers, but. Needs must, she can do something to keep dry. 

Her biggest concern is honestly bears, though. The bears in Thedas are fucking vicious if the games can be believed. 

Which, speaking of, for her sanity’s sake she’s going to believe that the games are at least semi accurate, so she doesn’t spend whatever days left she has alive worrying about it.

Wait, changes. 

One of her hands smacks up to her right ear.

...okay, she’s safe from being fantasy hate crimed. Still a boring round eared human. She lets out an embarrassingly relieved breath.

She peers around, checking for any signs of paths or people. She might want to avoid people until she’s got more weapons to scare them with, but she also is terrified of dealing with Thedas alone. Also where people are is where useful resources are. 

She keeps walking for an hour, or at least it feels that long, she’s never been good at keeping track of time, with her ADD, so who knows. The sun moved a little? She thinks? That’s probably a sign.

There’s lots of scruffy looking plants growing between the rocks and the dirt around doesn’t look like it’s particularly nutritious for growing, nothing a good compost bin couldn’t fix, because she is a walking compost maker, but. Hm. How do people make fishing rods again? She doesn’t think she’s gonna be very good at spearfishing. Nets? Traps? Probably best. 

Shelter. Focus on shelter you useless meat bag--

Oh.

A small hut sits, wedged in the corner of two tall stone walls, no smoke or lights inside, a dead garden, and steadily falling apart on top of it’s slightly lifted stone foundation.

Holy shit she’s the luckiest motherfucker to walk this side of the Waking Sea,  _ come to mama! _

\--

The bed is starting to mold, the whole place looks like it was just. Left to rot. Whoever lived here before, ( _ and part of her suspects dwarf man, though he died far too recently to have left this mess _ ), left and didn’t come back. 

There’s a bow! And a quiver! One of her skills can actually be used on some of those nugs she’s spotted around, though she’s not exactly eager to be eating nug. They look like they taste like spam, and though spam is fine with rice and soy sauce, she’s not so certain it’d do well in a stew.

But! She has a house! A hovel, if you will!

...and still can’t remember her name, and will never see her own reality again (probbably) and has no access to toilet paper and might die via blight.

Oh.

The Blight.

Darkspawn.

Oh fuck all, there’s deeproads entrances across the coast, it might be around the fifth blight,  _ motherfucker _ .

Walls. She needs to invest in walls. And copious explosives. 

How do you make gunpowder again?

You know what, it’s probably better off that she can’t remember how to make that, she’ll just stick to mustard gas and see what happens.

She takes a heavy seat in a worn wooden chair by the door of the hut and sighs, deeply.

Alright. Shelter, check. Food, then water.

She stares out, a hundred feet away is the drop from the cliff to the black shore. There’s a few scraggly pine trees scattered in clusters around her, and in the distance, to her left, she can see a huge stone carving of a dwarf, raised high in the cliffs and suspiciously familiar.

And everything is a depressing grey. 

Fun.

Alright, time to get moving again.

—

Survival is a hard process, especially when you’re just you, and only have pre modern tools to work with.

The pro of that is  _ she _ is modern, and with modernity comes knowledge. Knowledge makes dealing with pre modern tools much much simpler.

She uses a few buckets stacked up inside to set out for the incoming rain, because water is very important, and also looks around for any firestarters inside the hut.

...Which. No firestarters. Bummer.

She looks down contemplatively at her aching hands, crouched in front of the small fireplace. 

Hm.

Holding the appendages far from herself, just in case, she imagines fire bursting forth from her palms. Really hard.

…

Alright  _ that’s _ not working.

With an annoyed huff she shoves the logs she’d grabbed from a little pile inside the hut into the fireplace.

She stares at them with narrowed eyes. 

She snaps her fingers.

The logs burst into flame that has her squawking and falling back in her surprised scramble, staring incredulously at the, dare she say it, merry flame in the fireplace now. 

...what the fuck.

Why is this her life now?

Whatever, magic is useful, who cares if it’s weird. Not her! She’s not bothered  _ at all _ thank you very fucking much. Ugh.

Hm. Can Templars…tell, if you’re a mage? Does it smell? She’ll have to look into that. After she knows what year it is and is wearing something better than her stiff pajamas.

And after she remembers her name, of which she is starting to think is less likely to come back than she keeps telling herself. She can’t just keep playing the pronoun game with herself! It’s inhumane! 

What should she call herself, then?

Who is she?

She remembers going to school, parents, siblings, but. It’s muddled. Is that on purpose? Why can’t she remember her family’s faces? Her friends? What were their names? 

Who did this to her?

It should be more distressing, not remembering. She thinks it’s on purpose, someone or something probably took the bits that would complicate things about her being here and kept the pieces that were safe, important to her personality.

She remembers the normal stuff, current events, hours playing video games and reading and writing and drawing. She remembers spending time with people she loves. She remembers-

What the fuck is her  _ name? _

It’s. There is power to names. There is a self tied to what you are called. Who is she?

She sits, staring at the fire.

Well, shit.

She’s somebody from Florida, a somebody from Planet Earth, three planets down from Sol, the sun. She’s pretty fucking achey, and fairly certain she swam to shore in a rumbling sea intent on drowning her. She’s got magic now. She’s.

Hm.

Hehe what if she called herself  _ Teeth- _

No, vetoed, bad.

Well she can’t call herself “Somebody”, that’s cringe. 

...she just unironically called something cringe. Hades take her past the River Styx, she’s ready to  _ go _ .

Man this would be easier if she had one of those name generators. Sandy? Agua? That Girl Who Got Spat Out of The Ocean? Bleeder? Big Muscles No Brain.

She’s useless. Fuck it, she’s going with greek myth, that’s easy.

Her first thought is Aphrodite, because born of sea foam, but the hubris needed to call yourself Aphrodite is not in her, thank fuck. 

She leans back and lets her back hit the floor, staring up at the ceiling that needs new thatching.

Hestia? Daphne? Persephone? Hellen? 

Megara? 

Eris?

No one would  _ know  _ that’s the goddess of discord, she’s invoking.

Oh fuck it, might as well. 

“Hello Thedas, Eris, here to throw you into discord,” Eris grumbles, stretching her tan arms high above her head.

Eris levels a glance to her side at the molding bedding she’s gonna have to do something about, soon.

Ugh. To work.

—

Eris’s next tasks were--

Well.

She has a shelter, she has a water source (because besides rain she’s also managed ice cubes to melt into clean water, though the cubes only come out in little star shapes for  _ some _ fucking reason), now she needs food.

Eris has very little faith in her hunting skills. Next step is getting herself a net and fish traps, and by getting, she means making, because she can only get so much luck.

You’d think a person who lives by the ocean would have a net in their shed house, right? Wrong. Evidently the last tennant was allergic to fish or something, that’s probably why they’re dead.

Er.  _ Probably  _ dead. Hopefully far from here.

That’s quite rude of her but frankly finders keepers, alright? No takebacksies.

So she sets forth, gathering long grass and sticks and shoving them in her backpack, wary of any bears. She needs to weave rope out of the plant fibers, and the sticks can get tied into the body of a fish cage.

...what if she catches crabs by accident? She fucking hates shellfish on principle.

Eris is also at risk of starving to death and cannot afford to be a picky brat.

Damn she really hopes she doesn’t catch shrimp, she’d rather starve.

The grass, and man did she get a lot of grass, is tossed in a pile in the corner of her hut  _ farthest _ from the never not burning fireplace.

Yeah, this far above the shore she gets a brunt of winds. It’s fucking cold. No wonder the old owner skedaddled. 

Speaking of the old owner, she’s eyeing a pair of boots in the corner that might be better than her muddy, squeaky sneakers in this kind of area. They look big for her, most shoes are, she’s cursed with tiny feet, and she has no clue if any various arachnids and insects have made them their home. 

...later, after she’s figured out how to make a fish cage in practice.

She twists stubborn grass into little lines of twine, losing herself in the task and only getting sort of annoyed when she does it wrong and has to unwind some and start again.

It isn’t as boring as math class. She’ll live.

About halfway through making a fairly long line of twine Eris registers she is probably going to sleep with an empty stomach tonight, and wants to slam her head into a wall, but she endures. 

Is Spindleweed edible? She’s fairly sure it’s used in healing. So…  _ maybe _ edible? Worst thing that happens is she throws the stuff back up. 

Can she afford the time it’ll take throwing it all back up, though?

In the end she decides to just focus on making twine, because that requires way less work than contemplating if she wants to spend her first night in Thedas throwing up leafy red plants of questionable origins.

By the time she finishes her eyes are drooping and outside is getting darker and darker. 

Eris stands, swaying a little, and closes the hatches on the two windows, as well as makes sure the door is secure. She doesn’t know how well it’ll do against darkspawn and bears but. It’s as good as it’s getting.

Her body hurts, she still has sand on her, but. 

Well she’s  _ alive _ , that’s fucking good, if she has to say so herself. 

If she wakes up to darkspawn at her door she better figure out if the whole bursting things into flames thing works if she thinks of it as kindling. 


	2. Uncertainty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Figured I might as well post this since I’ve already got it done! Enjoy!

Eris has got a list. 

It’s a list she has scrawled onto the wall with charcoal, and memorized. It’s called “The List of Things I Need To Get Done So I Don’t Die”. 

...or The List, for short. 

Number one is food. That, she’s halfway through doing with her new fish trap and finding the places Ram like to hang around. 

( _ Eris needs animal skins really bad. The bedding she’s been using is molding and that can get her sick. The last fucking thing she needs to deal with here is being sick. _ )

Two is to fix the roof. That can be fixed with some new dry grass mixed with mud, since that’s what what’s left of the thatching seems to be made out of. 

She isn’t fond of getting rained on. And if she knows the Storm Coast, the only thing reliable about it is it fucking rains. A lot. 

Three, figure out what the date is. Seriously. Is she in the Blight?  _ A _ Blight? This is very fucking important. Please don’t be a Blight, she’s not ready for that. 

Four… survive. Yeah. Survive. Oh!

Five! New clothes! She’s cold! She needs a jacket bro it’s rainy and cold and she wants to be  _ dry _ and be able to wash her clothes. 

With a huff, Eris backs away from her sort of neat list on the wooden wall and sets the charcoal down on the table with suspicious stains, her only table. 

...six, deep clean. Everything. 

Eris gathers her amateur looking fish trap from the ground by the door and throws her bag over her shoulder, one of her daggers strapped to her waist by a belt she… uh, rescued? Pilfered from dwarf man’s corpse. 

Rest In Peace dwarf man. 

Fuck she really really hopes she wandered far enough away from that area, whatever took him out might find her. She’s squishy. 

And also can set things on fire. Or freeze the water in something’s blood. Don’t mess with her! She’s the scary mage you’re Chantry warned you about!

Haha  _ that _ is going to be an issue if she ever sees anyone else on this hell coast. 

Eris treks out her door and down a nearby, steep, path to the water. It’s not ideal, but the nearest path besides that is way farther than reasonable and way closer to dwarf man than she’s comfortable with. 

She should go back and bury him. 

_ She absolutely should not, she needs to get food before she starves.  _

...she might bury him anyways. Or set up a pyre. 

How the hell does someone make a pyre? 

Eris is on the beach before she knows it, rocks and sand crunching underfoot as she stops uncertainty at the edge of the waves. 

With a grimace, she sets the trap down beside her and pulls up her pant legs to her thighs, tying a piece of string to each leg to make sure the fabric stays up, and pulling off her socks and shoes. 

She stands, smooth cold stones under her toes, not really sure of how she should do this. 

She’s got bait, thanks to some digging she’s got a few worms to, ( _ sorry, worms _ ), stuff around a pine cone she’s got inside the trap. So, she knows the fish have incentive. 

Is this a good spot? Will the trap just get smashed against the shore?

Oh, she can probably put some rocks in, keep it from floating away. 

So, Eris begins her probably stupid endeavor to catch fish, because she’s hungry and wary of poking at the spindleweed quite yet. 

She wades into the water, legs surprisingly firm against the angry waves, trap in hand. She eyes the water, gouging how far until the waves get less severe, at least enough that they wouldn’t affect the floor. 

Fuck she is lucky she’s from a place with so much beach, this is a thing she actually knows how to deal with. 

She walks further in, grimacing at the cold, and gets stuck hip deep before she’s certain the trap will  _ probably  _ be fine. 

She puts it down in the water, and once she’s also sure that it’s on the bottom and not likely to be dislodged, she starts walking back to shore, shivering. 

The smell of salt and foam is heavy, the push and pull of the water is familiar. She’s been in the ocean since she was a kid, this? It might be colder than Florida, but it’s—

The water lapping at her stomach like a cold embrace is probably more friendly than any of the things that could meet her on the shore. It’s not like there’s any sharks around, waters aren’t warm enough and they wouldn’t bother her anyways. 

Ugh her clothes are all wet again. It’s at least fifty outside. She’s fucking crazy, isn’t she—?

Oh, wait. Magic. 

Idly, Eris taps her chest twice when she steps out of the water, and feels warmth fill her from head to toe, sighing heavily. 

Her clothes are just uncomfortably  _ lukewarm  _ and wet, now. 

...she’s not risking drying them with magic while they’re on her body. 

—

Y’know, if Eris has magic, she could, in theory, shapeshift.

She idly twirls more twine, she will always need more, seated leaning against the doorway, rain pouring down, and her quick patches to the roof thankfully keeping the downpour out. 

Hm. But  _ what _ would she turn into? What’s useful?

Oh. Wolf or dog, probably. It would make hunting easier with a sharp nose. Or a type of bird. Makes for a quick escape if any Darkspawn or bandits, or, fuck,  _ templar _ come knocking. 

Morrigan said something about knowing the form you’re trying to take fully, Eris thinks. Or that was fanon. It might’ve been fanon. 

She runs her tongue against the back of her teeth, thinking over what  _ knowing your new form fully _ means in a practical sense. Knowing the  _ vibe _ of being a wolf? Powerful legs, sharp teeth, pointed snout, wanting to harass little red cloaked girls on their way to see their grandmas?

She tosses the unfinished line of twine down beside her, flexing at her… weird new sense she’s gained since setting those logs on fire. Her mana muscle, if you will. 

She’s found physical motions make the magic happen. Be it tapping her chest to be warm or snapping her fingers to get ice and fire, she can’t just… mentally shout about wanting something to happen. 

She closes her eyes, focusing on her breathing and listening to the lulling sound of rain in her ears, the quiet crackle of the fire. 

Wolf. What’s a Wolf? 

Tendons tightened, crouched, in wait for prey. Rhythmic movement of one paw after the other. Sharp teeth fitting together with a click. 

Eris slams her fist down, sideways, onto the floor beside her with a  _ bang.  _

And then it’s not a fist anymore. 

With a yelp she falls over, body decidedly  _ not  _ right for sitting the way she just was, scrambling to roll back onto her feet— paws, oh fucking Christ she didn’t think this through it’s supposed to be  _ harder _ like a several chapter montage of meditation and—!

Bro this fucking cabin smells like mold. She needs to get rid of that fucking bedding. 

Before she can even think about it,  _ man is thinking hard she has a  _ **_tail_ ** _ right now what the  _ **_fuck_ ** , she’s got the bad bedding in her sharper than it should be mouth and in the  _ flames _ . 

…

She stares. 

She just put her bedding in the fireplace. 

With an annoyed  _ bark _ she’s not a furry anymore and starts shouting. Man can she shout. 

Several minutes of expletives later and Eris is sitting with a pout on her now empty cot/bed, arms crossed, slouching more than is probably good for her back. 

Note to self, shape shifting makes you really fucking impulsive. Now she needs to go take out a few Ram so she doesn’t  _ freeze to death.  _

Ugh. 

Magic is  _ stupid _ . 

—

Her trap is working good! There’s two fish in it!

Bad part. Very bad part, she has to kill and gut the fish. 

With a small stomp she’s got a small flat rock surface to work with, and she plops still flopping fish number one onto it and raises one of her daggers. 

“I’m sorry, bro,” Eris says, grimacing as she holds the lil dude down with one hand and—

Well. The less said about gutting fish the better. All anyone needs to know is she tried descaling one with magic and it sent the scales flying at high velocity, in every direction. 

She puts the guts on the pinecone to catch her more bait and guts in a second fish trap she just finished. More traps means more food, which means less dying. She’s a big fan of less dying, if you couldn’t tell. 

Eris takes a bucket with salt in it, previously a bucket with salt water, back up to the house with her. Not only to preserve any of the fish she doesn’t eat, but also because bland unsalted fish is not something she wants to subject herself to unless she’s in wolf form, and she cannot be trusted in wolf form. 

All of her fucking bedding. All of it.  _ Ugh.  _

Though, speaking of, she needs to figure out hunting. She’s scouted a flat patch of ground a little higher in the cliffs that the Ram like to hang around. It’d probably be smart to shift there and see what happens. 

Ugh, can she  _ trust _ her wolfsona ( _ yes she just called it that no no one can stop her she’s alone and gets to be weird _ ) to not bite the Ram somewhere that damages most of the hide? The hide and the meat are the important parts. 

...what’s she gonna do with the horns? And the bones?

Oh. Well she can make needles with bone. And sinew can be used for a lot of shit, like thread and for making even stronger twine, and glue. 

Can she use the goat hooves for glue? She remembers horse hooves being used somewhere to make glue. 

Thoughts thoughts and more thoughts, huh?

—

Eris is sort of lonely. 

Not bone aching, all consuming loneliness, she has felt that— shit,  _ she thinks _ she’s felt it before. The longer she’s here the more…muddy, some things get, but she knows this isn’t as bad. 

Eris doesn’t fucking know why, though, and she’s really figured out she  _ hates _ not knowing why things are the way they are. She’s just very good at distracting herself. 

She’s in a fucking videogame world, she’s stuck eating fish and scavenged elfroot, she’s alone in a tiny hut by an angry ocean and she’s fairly certain that’s  _ not alright _ , you feel her?

But. 

But she’s not as lonely as she thinks she should be. Maybe something got smacked out of whack in her brain before she woke up in the sand, she doesn’t have any fucking clue, but she’s only sort of lonely. 

Which is really weird. Because, well, humans are pack animals? And she is,  _ literally, _ as alone as a person can get. Foreign world, not a soul for miles save a dead man she burned herself, nada,  _ nothing.  _

And that should bother her. Why isn’t she  _ bothered _ ? The fact that it  _ doesn’t  _ bother her bothers her, for fucks sake!

Fuck. Fuck fuck  _ fuck.  _

“The sky burns and I ache, and I ache,” Eris grumbles. “I should take up poetry, keep me from going completely nuts. Maybe get a pet ram so I’m not talking to myself.”

She shifts her footing, staring out into the water, new ram hide blanket over her shoulders. 

“Does it  _ matter _ if I look crazy talking to myself if nobody else is around, though?” 

With a wave of her hand, and a flex of that new muscle that’s kept her from dying yet, Eris forms a small magelight, and lets it float beside her. 

“Hm. Probably. It probably matters. I should start talking to spirits in the fade, instead of imagining having garlic to add to my food while I’m there.”

Eris has a pyramid of needs, and near the top is the need for spices. 

Eris takes a deep breath, one of those that make your chest fill all right like until you can’t take anymore air in, and holds it, before letting it go.

She should go see if she can shove mana into the earth and make new plants grow, she saw it in a fanfic once, she’s probably got enough Will with a capital W. 

( _ She doesn’t, not with the veil like a thin cloth tying her mana muscle all tight, not enough can get through. _ )

“Oh how the sky burns and burns and burns. Hm, is that a reference to the Breach? Oh maybe I’ll start speaking in riddle sworn prophecy, doomed to never be believed…” Eris grumbles, shaking her head and giving the angry ocean one last parting glance, before starting back up to the cliff, magelight following dutifully. 

—

“ _ The problem about thinking, is you have thoughts, something something falsely philosophical, boring old man blah blah— wait shit no NO DON’T DO THAT GROUND—! _ ” 

( _ Yeah. Growing plants out of nothing goes as expected. _ )

—

She’s in a blight. 

Eris— there’s a feeling, a smell, a stench in the wind like whispering cruelty and she can  _ feel it under her skin— _

Yeah. Blight. Very blight. No fucking clue which one, hopefully the short one thanks to the Warden and not the Darkspawn story one where they win. 

If the darkspawn win she’ll just go to sea, fuckers can’t pilot a boat, now can they?

Win one for humanity, suck it void touched creatures of the night, or whatever. Or would it be deep? Creatures of the deep? Eris hasn’t a fucking clue anymore she’s gagging every few minutes because she can  _ feel _ the blight caressing it’s nails on her skin  _ bleghhh! _

_ Anyways _ , she’s discovered hunting as a wolf is fruitful! But she’s also like,  _ a wolf _ , and that means no impulse control and being bad at aiming her bites and claws at places that  _ don’t  _ damage the hides of what she’s killing. 

Also, killing things sort of makes her wish she had a religion? Like one that let her have a ritual for giving back to the earth for spilling blood, or whatever? It’s the circle of life, yeah, but death is death, need or no need. 

( _ Except for the darkspawn fuck if it gets the itch off her skin she’ll burn them all Targaryen style, burn in her fury and annoyance— you know this hate is starting to feel irrational she should look more deeply into herself about that—? _ )

But yes, Eris has started leaving the scraps of her kills in a specific spot, far from her cabin, for the other animals to do with as they will. Also she may have started saying “ _ Thanks for the meal, Earth-dude, _ ” when she does it and she has no explanation for that. 

Yeah she really fucking needs a friend this is getting ridiculous. 

But yes. Magic magic magic, it lets her do very strange and interesting things when she asks, though she shouldn’t be surprised when things go wrong. Like the scales. And no more bedding, thing. 

She asks things to be the way they should feel, and, uh, well telling the scales to get off of a fish was sort of asking for the vaguest interpretation. 

Speaking of. The Fade. So far it’s this...hazy thing. Like wisps of smoke curling around her wrists, half realized, blurred in their lack of reality, but able to change because of it. 

And then she remembers she’s dreaming. 

And like a switch, the haze leaves, and she’s  _ her _ , and things are very green. 

She then tends to start thinking about the foods she’d prefer to be eating if she can find the will to leave her desolate cliff, like rice and soy sauce. Fuck she wants some rice and soy sauce, she’ll give— well not any limbs. She needs those, unfortunately, tied to a flesh prison and all, but she would give a lot for some soy sauce to pour on things at least. 

...which is stupid, because she already puts a fuckton of sodium on her foods thanks to the sea salt, but whatever. Her dreams, her rules, fuck off. 

Which,  _ also _ , rules make the magic not flow. 

She comes into the fade and asks it to,  _ let’s it  _ be as it is. It can be anything, and nothing, and everything, she need only ask. If she gives it parameters it will try to make the parameters... _ real.  _

Mind vs matter type beat. 

So, anyways. With her food dreams there’s really been no time for networking. 

Maybe things peered at the edges of her dreams, gluttony, desire, whatever, but. 

The Storm Coast is a graveyard. 

And not— it’s a  _ dwarven  _ graveyard. Dwarves don’t become spirits when they go, they’re not made of the right stuff, like trying to fit a square block into a triangle hole. 

It’s empty. It feels empty. Half hushed, only old things left. Old old things from  _ before.  _ The ones that didn’t get torn asunder with the fall. 

Fuck, look at Eris being all cryptic and shit? 

Point is, fade is  _ empty.  _ Very little hanging around but dead sort of elves and sailors still trying to cling to broken boards. Not exactly the most friendly types. 

So of course, she just starts walking out of her dreamscape until she finds someone. Because that’s clearly the only answer when nothing will come to you. 

Can you see her face? No? The neutral look of displeasure, it’s called— yes  _ now _ you’re seeing it! Good job! 

You see, in an area with so little new… _ energy _ disturbing it usually, adding the waking equivalent of a bright sun, because, y’know,  _ mage, _ does not end well, usually?

The fade makes things easier, an egg once said, with weirdly good game for an old racist elf. 

So she walks. 

And she walks. 

Until—

Desire, kisses upon the brow featherlight, hands cupping her face, the taste of chicken adobo on her lips and it makes Eris want to  _ cry— _

Things are easier in the fade. 

“You could have it, if you would like,” A quiet voice that sounds like so many more says behind her. 

Eris let’s out a shuddering sob. 

“ _ No _ .” Eris draws herself tall, feels the fade fill her arms to her shoulders to her  _ self _ with tingling energy. The green writhes with rolling feeling. “Stop it.”

Pieces broken, the edges are furrowed, red, irritated, it wasn’t a clean job, the mind never is too many intertwining pieces—

“So young, so much desire, but so simple.”

Eris doesn’t know the voices it uses. She does. She doesn’t. 

“If you desire to know, I could help.”

They couldn’t. They wouldn’t. 

Or maybe they would, but it doesn’t matter. 

“I don’t,” Eris says, smelling salt and the sensation of water in her lungs. “You know that, don’t you?”

There’s not enough of whatever she was before to want it. To desire it. 

“You should buy me a drink first, next time,” Eris murmurs. “Hello, Desire.”

Desire steps forward from behind her, a wisping grey shape, tired, old. More than old. They barely form the shape of a humanoid, or, rather, from the ears, elvenoid. 

“You’ve reformed, recently,” Desire says, voices still many. “I didn’t know the physical could do that, since the fall.”

Eris learns new things everyday. 

“Stranger things have happened,” Eris says, very aware she’s talking to a spirit, something previously very not real to her. 

“Indeed.”

The air, (there is no air, in the fade, the dreaming not in the way she thinks), twists. Reality changes, echos, really. 

“May I?” Desire asks, waving one half visible hand. 

Eris shrugs. Honestly she’s still trying to process what just happened before this, she’s up for whatever in this state. 

And suddenly, a sweet smelling garden of twisting, old, old wood. 

Perfectly formed chairs of living vines, brightly colored lights dancing beyond the archways in the midday light. 

Eris takes a heavy seat in one of the chairs, and Desire follows.

“What do you desire?”

Safety, friends, spices. Does it matter?

“Of course it does.”

Eris snorts, and with a wave of her hand has a can of cold Coke in hand, downing a swig of it like it’s alcoholic. “To you I suppose it is, desire is your bread and butter. By the way, next time? Just say hello instead of trying to push me to mental breakdown.”

Desire leans back in their seat, one leg crossing over the other as if far more physical than they are. 

“I have not seen a mage in many years, forgive me if I was...hm, excited.”

Excited, they say. Eris huffs. 

“Gets lonely on the coast, hm? You’re old, can’t you move?” Eris stares out into the ancient garden that no longer exists, nothing but ruined rocks deep in the ground. 

Dust, more like. 

“Old things get rooted, you’ll find, Discord,” Desire says wryly. 

“Read the meaning from my mind, did you?” Eris asks, glancing over at them. 

“I read nothing,” Desire says, discordant voice like a strange symphony. “I only state what you are.”

...great. 

“Wanna be friends?” 

Eris really needs to stay on objective here, operation Don’t Go Crazy Alone.

...though she might’ve already hit crazy trying to make friends with a demon/spirit that tried to possess her on meeting. 

Eris is sure it was just lonely or something, it’s not like she’s stupid enough to let it in. 

Even if she did, Desire would die in the heat death of her mind so. She’s fine. 

“Yes, I’m seeing as much, now,” Desire says, unamused. “Discord and Desire are...volatile, as partners. No, I think I will settle with friendship. The mana you waft is meal enough for me.”

“Coolio,” Eris says, letting her head lull back and her eyes close, slouching in her chair. “Now, would you like to tell me about yourself?”

“I am a spirit formed during the fall of the veil, millenia ago.”

“Cool, cool, what did you do between then and now?”

“Fed off the desire of sailors, mostly.”

“...how’s that taste?”

“Like homesickness. And lust.”

“Huh. Yeah, that’s about what I’d expect.”

All in all, things are going great! Mostly. Probably. 

Eris likes to think so, at least. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Feelings? Favorite survival techniques?


End file.
